CI Higher Education Blog

CI Higher Education Blog provides our clients with current and upcoming digital trends, news, and insights across higher education on a variety of digital topics including social media, development apps, campaigns, user experience best practices and other hot-button educational issues.

Donate Online in a Direct, Effortless Manner

In our recent brief, Donate Now: A Look at the Online Giving Process, Corporate Insight showcases three schools’ online giving form processes from start to finish. The report draws from our Alumni Monitor Updates, which track 46 colleges and universities with a wide range of endowment sizes. Here, we highlight best practices for online giving forms and spotlight Boston University, which stands out for its seamless donation process.

Boston University’s online giving form is straightforward and easy to complete. The university incorporates best practices for giving forms, including breadcrumbs, expandable sections, lightboxes and responsive design in its process. Among the more notable aspects, BU houses its form within a scenic view of Boston, making it the first school in the Alumni Monitor coverage group to incorporate visuals. The use of checkboxes and call-to-action links with red backgrounds help direct donors within the four-step process.

The first step in the school’s giving form—Support BU—contains three sections: I’d Like to Give, Choose Your Cause and About You. The I’d Like to Give section requires donors to enter their gift amount and indicate their payment frequency. The Choose Your Cause section allows them to select the gift designation using a unique lightbox database that sorts 45 funds into four primary gift designation categories: General BU Funds, Schools & Colleges, Popular BU Funds and Other. Once they select a gift designation from the lightbox, a Selected Designations box on the main page allows them to assign gift amounts to each designation. The About You section solicits donors’ personal details, including affiliation and school/college. Optional checkbox sections provide fields for additional information and comments.